The force of the impact cast me tumbling from my perch. I fell, almost thoughtless once more. Almost but not quite, I had expected this and had greater concerns.

A popup appeared. I smashed it aside before the words could appear.

Another, just as I hit the olivine floor and bounced into the air.

A third as I skittered and ricocheted about the basin. Like the first two I threw it aside, I had to tend to -

You are experiencing Mana Overflow.

I tried to cast the missive aside like the others, send it into my logs to be dealt with later. It refused to be dimissed, persisting through rebounds until I came to a stop. It was right I realised, I felt the burn of a huge upsurge of mana within me. I radiated a brilliance beyond anything I'd managed previously, I had to -

You are experiencing Mana Overflow.

Mana: 243.8/50

Due to exceeding your maximum Mana in excess of twice your capacity, Mana will be expended to avoid detonation by manifesting a random augment or artifact.

This will consume between 80 and 100% of your current mana.

The magic blazed within me, burning and terrible. The rings around the rift at my centre shifted, allowing one to grow in size. A gap appeared in the ring, nauseating and painful - imagine the sense of a bone separating and pulling to form a divide. The magic coalesced, started to form a bridge. I felt myself expand even as my magic decreased, crystalising into a new rune -

Argent lay gasping in the hollow stone blister. One goblin collapsed over it's winch, ragged breathing growing fainter. The other sat on the cold stone, bleeding and disoriented. All three were wounded, something eating them from the inside. The Thaumivorous Cave Crawler's effluent hissed and spat upon the stone, the steel guillotine was eaten through and fell with a splash. The acid ate away at all it touched, creating a haze of corrosion inhaled by the three minions. The bronze capping on the onyx basin popped and bubbled, the sickly fog falling upon me. Rutile rays began to wash away and my surface fogged.

You have gained the gift of Foresight.

You may predict the future within your realm at a rate of 1 mana per second per room.

Beware however, the further you cast your gaze the less accurate the vision.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

I reeled from the vision, mana all but spent. I was left with barely four, which I rapidly spent to seal away the remains of the Crawler behind a glass pane. The steel blade fell, ringing through the glass and cracking it but I soon sealed the damage. Fog rose behind it, chewing at the walls but for now my minions were safe. Argent's breathing was laboured, satisfied with the improvised shield I turned my attention to her-

She wept blood, more leaking from every orifice. Her skin blackened from internal haemorrhaging, limbs limp and splayed at uncomfortable angles. I could see signs of snapped tendons, ligaments torn, flesh split and torn from bone. Crimson pooling in the shallow bubble was beginning to spill back into her open mouth and into a nostril, putting her in real danger of drowning in her own lifeblood. I used a few fractions of mana to free her from her tomb but couldn't lift her. I couldn't heal her, a Dungeon cannot directly affect the bodies of living creatures without dedicated traits and spells; none of which I had. I turned my attention to the two winchmen, ready to give the order to help her.

I had created them in haste and desperation. Normally the process of creating new minions is a measured one, gathering mana and turning it to form skeleton, nervous system, arteries and blood vessels, flesh and skin methodically in an iterative process. I had not been methodical or measured with these two. I had needed strength and little else, they were horrifying muscled brutes. One rasped across his winch, spine dislocated in several places by his own exertions. The other was slumped on the floor, his winch pulled through and with no more left to do had simply stopped. In my desperation I had created a sapient barely more intelligent or independent than a golem - probably for the best considering his sheer muscle mass had burst through his skin in several places.

"You!" I demanded, simultaneously putting the cripple out of his misery with a bronze spike from the winch. The sitter looked around blankly. "Carry me to Argent."

The moron watched slackjawed as his compatriot dissolved into mana, holding up a hand as though to try and catch one. I turned the full weight of my attention to the nameless cretin. "Carry me to Argent."

This time he stood, approaching me blankly. I was about to give the order again when he finally picked me up. The disorientation from being moved and the discomfort of being held by a living being...I nearly killed him on the spot despite myself. I needed his help. Seconds crawled by before I realised he had no idea who Argent was.

I made a mental note that no matter how desperate I was, I would never create a creature so unintelligent again.

"Bring me to the girl, place me in her hand."

Slowly, far too slowly, the poor idiot lumbered across the chamber to Argent. Her breathing was weak, barely rippling the pool of her blood. I was placed in her hand, the brute gently closing her fingers around me. I burned a sliver more mana ordering him to lift her, place her against my broken fountain. His task fulfilled, I gathered a bronze needle in my light.

"Thank you," I whispered, ashamed. "I am sorry I must repay you so poorly."

He began to collapse before us but I caught him, slid the needle out. I could not heal Argent but the mana that welled within me was the same that had made her, I pushed it from myself gently, unguided, giving it freely. She was a talented caster, had learned from simply observing my own workings with astonishing speed. I placed my trust in her.

I did not reabsorb the misshapen brute, instead lifting his corpse to roll it in the crawler's acid. The horrible yellow fog remained sealed behind the glass, I used the vomit it had sent at Argent. The fog around it was far weaker, nowhere near the same quantity as what had erupted from the monster. It was enough for my purposes. Again and again I doused the body in the acid, regrowing it before Argent slowly, in detail. At last she seemed to gain enough knowledge or mana to begin to attempt to heal herself. Far above I collapsed more rooms, consumed more precious resources.

Her first efforts were slow, haphazard. Twice I had to halt her, carve out flesh grown back wrong. We laboured upon a single eye for fully half an hour, blinding it entirely. At last I directed her, barely able to maintain my own consciousness in the sickening, shaking grip of a mortal however trusted, to begin creating eyes anew. When at last she could create her own eye, she plucked her blind eye from her skull with a scream. Trembling, shaking fingers paused, my crippled castellan whimpering to create another upon the floor. She was, I realised, concerned her pained shaking would distort the work - correctly it seemed for it took her four agonisingly slow attempts to manifest her eye correctly. I pushed feelings of calm and confidence into the mana I fed her, demonstrated how to activate the hypothalamus and pituitary glands in the cadaver so she could flood herself with endorphins and deaden the pain.

Her breathing began to steady, not to normal but enough she was able to replace her missing eye, creating the new one directly from her mangled optic nerve. Able to see at last, she healed her other eye without enucleation. I broke open the body's chest, regenerated the lungs. The work went more quickly the more experience she gained. The last of her injuries she healed without needing to be shown. We sat for some time after, recovering. Argent held me tightly, fist clenched to her chest. It was awful, only the tiniest gaps between her fingers giving me access to the surface, never fully still, the sickening sensation of a living being against me.

It was comforting.

At length, so long my mana was all but fully restored, she clambered to her feet. Argent lifted me to my pedestal, stepped back, straightened her back and smoothed her robes and my castellan stood before me once more.